Original garlands are one of the ways to decorate the room, which create coziness and a festive mood. Few people know that LED garland, made with their own hands, is an easy thing to do. You will be able to independently create an option that suits you and fits perfectly into the interior.
What are the garlands
On the shelves of shops you can find a huge number of different options, so as not to get lost in all its diversity, you need to know how they are arranged and how they differ. Knowing what a LED garland pattern is will help you if you decide to make it yourself.
Types of garlands:
- Traditional garland thread.
- Garland Mesh.
- Curtains.
- One of the curtain options is icicle garlands.
- Durolight.
- Kiplayt.
- A stroblight will create flicker.
Now that you have decided on the types of garlands you create, you need to carefully study the wires and types of power that can be used to create a garland with your own hands.
Wire and Power Types
Modern garlands are made using one of three types of wire. For this, rubber, silicone and PVC materials can be used. For outdoor decorations, the first two types of wires are used, since they have increased moisture resistance and are quite resistant to temperature extremes. Indoors, you can use budget LED Christmas lights with PVC wire.
By type of power, two types can be distinguished: autonomous and electric. The former are ideal for decorating facades and places where electricity cannot be supplied. Such street LED garlands operate on batteries. Due to low energy consumption, a large amount of time can work. A big plus in mobility, they can easily be taken with you on promotions. Electric plug into the outlet.
Option 1. Create a garland from the old keyboard
It happens that a garland is needed in the shortest possible time, but there is no money to buy it. Then the master class “LED garland made by yourself” will come to the rescue. Consider the most budgetary version of the rework of old computer office equipment, such as a keyboard and mouse.
To complete the work you will need:
- A few unnecessary keyboards (you may not work).
- Soldering iron.
- Resistors
- Insulating tape.
- Shrink tubing.
- Flux or rosin.
First you need to remove various unnecessary wires from the keyboard and carefully disconnect the USB cable. In order for the LED garland, made by yourself, to be complete, it is worth looking for at least five keyboards. Ask your friends, acquaintances or go to local forums. Each has at least three LED lights that serve as indicators of the command buttons. If there is an unnecessary gaming room in stock, then there will be no price for it, because a large number of LEDs are collected there. The most interesting option is obtained by mixing different bulbs from different office equipment.
Instruction manual
Disassemble the keyboard and get out a small board with a controller. It is to her that the bulbs will be soldered in the future. It is important to consider that any LED garland (made by yourself) consists of 12 elements that are connected to the resistors in parallel. If you consider that ordinary USB gives a voltage of 5 volts and a current strength of 500 mA.
The natural voltage of each element does not exceed 5 volts. If you connect them directly, they will overheat and quickly burn out. It is necessary to lower the voltage. This can be done by pairwise soldering elements. Thus, each of them will lower the other. But this option is not optimal. It is best to use a certain framework of tension that will not infringe on the riot of colorful lights.
Take the cable and burn a little braid on one side. Solder into the bare windows. So you will create a DIY LED garland of the required length. Get the required shape, length and isolate bare spots. He eats veins inside the cable: minus - black, plus - red. Connect the entire structure and start testing the street LED lights.
Option 2. Creating a garland from scratch
If you want to make an interesting garland that will meet the given requirements, then carefully study the figure below. The LED garland scheme will allow you to delve into the process and understand in detail the order of all the elements.
In that case, if we consider the possibility of emergency regulation of the multivibrator frequencies as a result of a shift at the ends of all available transistors, the question arises of the difficulty of replacing field and bipolar transistors. In this case, it is necessary to consider the frequency of switching, if you reduce the period, then the LEDs located on the garland will begin to switch very quickly.
So, used VT-1 and VT-2 can be similar to KTZ101 and KTZ15. To determine the supply voltage and its drop in the entire chain of LEDs, you can use transistor R2.